And now, America's number one show on pop culture and politics. This is the Michael Medved

show. And another great day in this greatest nation on God's Green Earth. Yes, it is the

greatest nation on God's Green Earth. The U.S. economy has been trouncing Europe's.

Now, how could that be?

Given the fact that almost every time you hear about international tests given to students at various levels,

American students don't do particularly well. British students do much better by one measure,

according to Edward Conrad. When you look at the tests for Germany, the ratio of high to low scorers

is three times better than America's. Scandinavia's is five times better. Japan's is seven times better than America's.

Scandinavia's is five times better.

Japan's is seven times better.

So why is our economy chugging along while so many of these other economies are struggling?

There's a very provocative column in the Wall Street Journal today,

and it's a column by Edward Conrad, who is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on U.S. economic policy, in particular the effect of taxes, governmental policies, and finance on risk-taking and innovation.

Okay, Ed Conard, how serious is the gap education

between U.S. and Europe, and why does that not work

to Europe's advantage economically? Sure. Northern Europe has about

twice as many high scores per capita as the United States. We have about 12% of our population

are scoring at the highest levels versus about 24, 25 percent in Scandinavia, Northern Europe, and

Japan. So they have a real advantage. The difference, of course, is that our workers are

mining the technological frontier at companies like Google and Facebook and Intel and Microsoft.

And so they're learning things and are being exposed to ideas,

which are much more valuable than the ideas that Europeans are being exposed to. An example of

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